


The Magnate

by BetterBeMeta



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Aldmeri Dominion, Alinor, Backstory, Gen, Summerset Isles, autistic hero, skyrim prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 17:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 16,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7626937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BetterBeMeta/pseuds/BetterBeMeta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Valamand was born of the rarest bloodline, high as the stars. Valamand was both the youngest and the most talented battlemage to ever exit the academy on Auridon.  And yet, despite his magnificence, he would fail the Thalmor and the Thalmor would fail him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 4E 158

Tutor took the book from Valamand. And, he had a name, but Valamand knew him mostly as Tutor, and knew him as the one who told him when it was time and when it was not time to read.

“Mm!” Valamand yelped, groping for his last page, which only made Tutor shake his head and sigh.

Tutor shut the book and placed it on a nearby shelf.  Then he said, “Now’s no time for that. And use proper language, young master.”

“Yessir,” said Valamand, who was yellow and thin and already quite gangly. It was a good thing that his stockings were gathered at the hip and the sleeves of his robe could be let out. Nothing could be tailored as fast as a young Altmer could grow. 

“It’s time for lessons,” said Tutor.

“It’s not. I have five minutes still, and twenty seconds—”

“ _It is_ time for lessons, young master. Will I tell the Kinlady you’re arguing?”

“Nosir,” said Valamand, who also knew the Kinlady was actually Mother as well, but for some reason other people made it sound like these two names belonged to two different womer. Tutor wore polished leather boots, but there was a scuff in one of them.

“Chin up. We’re beginning.”

Valamand lifted his head to look out the window while Tutor arranged the materials. The sun cast shadows down the winding path and unto orchards below. There were more weeds than yesterday. Somebody came to pluck them, but they always came back.

A thick book sat out now before him, with an umber binding and gleaming gilt-edge pages. It was not the sort of book that was good, to Valamand. It was not a book that had something interesting in it, but instead a dull book. A sneering book. A book that, when no one was looking, Valamand might think was like Tutor.

If only people were like books. That they could be opened, and closed, and taken out or put away. That you could read them at any pace, and understand. That their titles meant something.

“Next year, you will study Filioheraldry, but this—”

“What’s that?”

Tutor wasn’t pleased. Tutor was never pleased. Valamand had done something, _again_ , displeasing.

“Filioheraldry is the study of the ancient families of Aldmeris, their symbology and their legacy, and what protocol and context applies to each,” said Tutor tiredly. “But to grasp that, first you must grasp your own genealogy.” 

Tutor opened the book. Carefully, if the spine was delicate. The pages themselves were thick and contained straight-graphed penlines and few words at all on many pages. Instead were pictures. Not the interesting pictures, more like a diagram of many small portraits. It did not take Valamand long to realize this was not a building or something magic, but only who was married and to whom.

(The pictures didn’t help much. To Valamand, many of the faces looked alike.)

“I cannot ask you memorize, not yet,” said Tutor. “But perhaps this will convince you to take your studies more seriously. If you had something to… aspire to.”

Valamand nodded. That was sometimes the best way to get someone to stop talking about things that didn’t seem important. Well, maybe in this case it was important. But being scolded and taking lessons, thought Valamand, ought to be different.

“This is Luxurene, once of Aldmeris,” said Tutor. This was a name and a picture at the very beginning of the book, though the face was too dark to make out. “The progenitor of your bloodline, who herself witnessed Auri-El’s empyreal ascension.”

Valamand tried to count how long ago that was, but couldn’t. Which meant, by his best guess, it was very, very long ago.

“You are descended from her, directly,” said Tutor. “Which makes you who you are.”

“What books did she like?” Valamand said.

Tutor was stunned.

Valamand closed his mouth. Then, weakly, “Were books invented then?”

“None remain, if any existed,” said Tutor. “But that is unimportant.”

“That’s too bad,” Valamand said.

“Don’t interrupt.”

Valamand, for the life of him, could follow directions at least. 

Tutor then leafed forward many pages, a quarter of the book. “This is Hekthelian, crystal-weaver, who in ancient times led the creation of the Crystal Tower. And, no, we don’t know about any books of his. Don’t ask.”

Tutor had told him not to interrupt, so he did not say anything. But Valamand knew, from something somebody had said once, that the Crystal Tower fell down. If that was true, it didn’t seem like a good tower. When they built a new one, maybe they should build it better so it stays up. 

“From that point onward, Luxurene’s notoriety was well-known. Here's the first era and onto the second. Elruuvior, Peldina, Fanunaarnon: all great Kinlords and Kinladies of their time. They built your Kinship, young master. And they do watch your progress even now.”

“Like you do,” said Valamand.

“I do not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath,” said Tutor. “But you are right to consider them as much your teachers. In time, you will learn from each.”

“I get to see them summoned?” Valamand stammered, having never witnessed a real summoning of anything before.

“No, young master. Many of them _have_ in fact written books,” said Tutor smugly. These were not the kind of books that Valamand thought he wanted to read, though. But it would be impossible to convince Tutor that he didn’t like books.

Tutor skipped forward again, nearly to the end. He pointed to a blank space at the thinnest branch of the farthest level. “That is where your picture will go, when you are of-age to sit for the portrait.”

It seemed like a lonely spot to be, far from all the important people. “There’s my mother,” Valamand said, pointing to a picture of his mother, what the book referred to as “Cyrodwen.” Her portrait was smiling, but did not look so much like the Mother that Valamand knew. When he grew up, he imagined he’d get a better drawer of pictures to make sure he looked like himself. Maybe they didn’t want to make it that way.

Valamand wondered if he should draw himself right in instead.

Up from his mother was another place for a small picture, but it had been removed. Back from his mother was… his mother again. With a different name underneath.

“And here’s your father, Elador,” said Tutor, moving Valamand’s finger to point at the correct person. He had a long, straight beard and tired-looking eyes. Valamand hardly had heard that name before.

“Who’s that?” Valamand asked, pointing to the person who looked like his mother.

“That is your grandmother,” said Tutor. Valamand waited, but Tutor said no more on it.


	2. 4E 160

Valamand tented the covers with his knees and propped the next book up in bed. The stack on the other side of him made a lumpy pile, but it was away from the doorway and he’d stuffed the crack shut with rags. Magelight was bright. He shuttered the window, too. Just in case.

Making light in his palm felt warm. 

He turned the page. The slim barely-a-fold of _Galerion the Mystic_ was too short to sate him. They’d been hiding books from him! Not good enough, though. He didn’t even have to find them himself. He hid the clairvoyance manual under his mattress for a month. But by then, it had been too late.

On the paper, Galerion battled Daedra. He invented new magic that hadn’t even been thought of. He talked to spirits and bargained with centaurs and even convinced Kinlords to do what he wanted. And everybody wanted his good word.

And there was evil! Necromancers! The forces of Oblivion! Barbarians, witch-hunters, merslayers, and anything Valamand could have imagined. Things that were, by his standards, truly important. Why it was wrong to trap another person inside a soul gem. Why reading was the best thing to give to any person. Why magic was the greatest of all arts and sciences.

Galerion once had even been common! Valamand gasped as he read of the ancient ways of the first era. Which one of his ancestors had been alive? Had they spoken?

Valamand’s face fell. Irinden. Irinden had been the High Kinlady at the time of Vanus Galerion’s birth. As far as he knew, her only achievement had been a more proper course of conditioning for goblins.

But still!

Something was burning. Valamand smelled it near, until he realized that his magelight had begun emitting heat. “Ouch!” he yelped, flinging the blanket away. The blackened scorch upon it burst into flame. Valamand threw the books off the bed, then realized he himself was still on the bed. He fell with a scream, sliding what tomes he could under the wooden frame.

Loud footfalls were coming down the hall. Valamand looked up over his sheets like a horse over a hedge. He snatched the candle that was cold on his bedside and threw it in the flames.

The door burst open, two servants in nightclothes themselves thundering in. When they saw the fire their eyes went wide. One turned to run again, fetch water.

“No! You don’t have to worry, I just was reading at night! I dropped my candle!” Valamand said. The flames didn’t do anything to calm them down though. “Look, I can fix it!”

Fire, Valamand had learned, was just the energy released when something solid broke apart into ash and smoke. It ate air to break more of itself apart. So to put out flames, one could remove the air. Banishing the air was just too hard and too silly, and what would Oblivion want with just air? Turning air into sand was also silly, conjuring sand or water was even sillier. And certainly one could make the bed like it had been before, but it would continue to be on fire.

Valamand moved the air about twenty feet forward. Which itself was about gently moving everything twenty feet forward out of the way.  This air could woosh into its place, making wind, snuffing the blaze. The servants stared at the ashes even more than the fire. Valamand tried to smile, even when he realized he’d gotten soot all over them.

“Huzzah! I’m a great mage!” he said.

They told his mother.


	3. 4E 161

“And remember. They may be your betters, but you are the king of birds. Do not stoop, soar.”

Valamand knew this wasn’t literal, because it was ridiculous. It had some other meaning that he had yet to learn. He wondered, while his mother’s handmaid straightened his clothes. Then, High Kinlady Cyrodwen made her appearance. Valamand accompanied her.

And there were so many rules, so many things to remember. To smile. To be charming. To speak little, which was not difficult. To show no interest in lesser matters. More difficult. To meet eyes, at times.

Valamand’s back was as straight as a brace. And each time his mother graciously introduced him, he thought to himself, king of birds, king of birds.

He tugged at his close collar and shadowed his mother’s steps. The Sunhold hall was superb, old wood and white sea-lime polished to a shine. Tiny ancient creatures trapped in the stone had been highlighted with opal in their primordial pool. There was music, Valamand supposed. But he was quite tone-deaf and could not say if he enjoyed it or found it disruptive. It certainly required voices be firmer than was comfortable.

“Ah, Cyrodwen of Luxurene. And who is this?” 

Valamand had never seen the cut of this mer's formal clothes before. He had a long smile and a short mustache.

“This is Valamand, my son,” said the womer curtly. “Valamand, this is Ehlnir, Canonreeve of the city of Dusk.”

“I am very pleased to meet you, Canonreeve,” Valamand said automatically. He bowed at exactly the angle he had been taught. The mer’s shoes were silver and sequined. But Valamand did not bow for longer than was appropriate. His mother had been specific in address and she only did that when a mer was worthy of precisely what she indicated and nothing more.

“Likewise, young Valamand,” said the Canonreeve. Then he turned his attention away, back to his mother, and began to talk about… things. They may have been important things. Valamand looked around instead, realizing that if there was some sort of meal it was either later or that his mother would not be attending. That while his own outfit was fine, it was not new. That there was hardly anyone making their way to his mother to speak, but quite a few for several other important lords.

That there were mer in black standing at every other staircase, watching.

His mother’s voice sliced through his thoughts. “I find it an ideal arrangement, and appropriate for my island’s security. Not every kinship has a wall of stone and Alinor’s landmass, a city to call in militia.”

“I completely agree,” said the Canonreeve. “In the past, Maormer have proven to circumvent these factors. Effectively they are useless to ensure safety. In peacetime, however—”

“Canonreeve, I am afraid that you will not change my mind. Garrison of the Thalmor is Luxurene’s boon, and would be a boon to your own city as well.”

Mother rarely argued with anything or anyone. She had her other ways. Valamand was not sure if he should stand closer or farther from her cool reproach.

“I will build for them their own parlor,” said the Canonreeve. “And once they are satisfied with that, they will demand their own theater. After the debut, perhaps their own promenade, for government use... One does not deny the _Thalmor_ after all, if they might empty certain corners of society, and make full the rest.”

With each word that he said, the Kinlady Cyrodwen trembled. Her hands in gauze gloves clenched where they were neatly folded. “Canonreeve. We’ll finish this later tonight.”

There was such a swirl of silks that Valamand lost track of who faced where. He soon found himself by the small plates of pre-supper.  After filching a fistful of candied chestnuts Valamand ducked under the tablecloths to hide. He nibbled quickly, lest the sweets be taken away.

It was dim, but he could still read the book he’d smuggled in at his hip. It was slim. An old collection of official papers, regarding a Mage’s Guild that no longer existed, on the utilities of different Destruction magics. The great Mage Galerion insisted Shock magics were the superior craft. Valamand didn’t exactly disagree. But fire magic didn’t get enough credit.

Underneath the rim of the thick cloth, silver sequined shoes tapped close to the buffet. Valamand looked up from the book and realized that no one was watching him.

He tugged on the hem of his glove and cast an impressive _fury_ spell for a 10 year old child, right onto the shoes of Canonreeve Elhnir of the City of Dusk.

Now, Valamand intended for the mer to cause a scene. He would make a mess of himself or a fuss or whatever sort of tantrum that someone grown might throw. But what Valamand did not intend was for Elhnir to overturn a divan, draw an unseemly hidden knife, and attack the host at Sunhold screaming, “Death to tyrants! Death to kinslayers!”

His mother knew exactly where to find him. She rarely ever _manhandled_ anybody or anything, but soon Valamand was yanked by the wrist towards the exit. He tripped over his mother’s billowing gown.

“He’s a traitor,” Valamand said in awe, looking back. The black-robed mer had Elhnir down in an instant, were ushering the guests into another room. “That’s why he hates the Thalmor.”

Valamand smiled. Then faltered. Then smiled. “Mother, I—”

“I know this is your doing,” said his mother.


	4. 4E 164

The timeclock’s pendulum ticked on his room, as it always had. It wasn’t normal, Valamand thought, for one’s first memories to be of a timeclock. But he had known it before his first words, and had counted it before he could count. It was a constant presence in his mind. Back and forth, with a tiny chime on each end so soft that only silence revealed it. Measuring hours and days by seconds and half-seconds that Valamand could start and stop at will.

Valamand pushed aside the inches assigned for seating arrangements and sample invitations. He turned his scrap over.

On this paper were two drafts, and one sketch. One draft was a letter explaining and applying for admission to the College of Aldmeri Excellence, in the north of Auridon. The other draft was the same, for the University of the Sun at Cloudrest. The sketch though was only an idle drawing of himself, older and smiling and in magnificent robes. In one hand he held a swirl of smudgey fire, and in the other a bright light indicated with small lines.

“My son.”

It was so rare that his mother would come to his room that Valamand jumped in his seat, almost crumpling his paper. He turned his chair neatly around, folded his hands in his lap. His finger twitched. “Ah, Mother! I didn’t hear you come in.”

Normally, a servant would fetch him.

“You’re focused on your studies,” said his mother. “I hope.”

“Yes, Mother,” Valamand said.

“Tell me of them. And look at me, for Stars’ shame.”

Valamand looked up at his mother’s gaunt face. “I, er, was studying protocol… for events.”

“Good,” said his mother. “Your debut is only a few years away now. You must be ready.”

“Mother I,” Valamand first began. Then he corrected himself. “It’s true that after my debut, I will be considered an adult?”

“In some senses,” said his mother.

“Then, I have a plan. To help you, I mean. If you help me achieve it,” Valamand said. “I… I want to be known for something. And if Luxurene is known for me… I,”

“Valamand, my son. Show me what you have hidden there, behind you.”

And he obeyed, because he had been taught to obey. His mother Cyrodwen turned over his pages, studied the two drafts written upon them. Valamand looked at the floor, counted the knots upon his satin rug.

Paper ripped above him. Valamand’s head snapped up. His mother did not smile, or frown as she took the two halves of his drawings and letters and lined them up again. Then, turned it sideways and tore it into quarters. Into perfect eighths. And then tossed them into the fire.

“These are distractions,” she said. “Focus. Do not fantasize.”

Valamand stared at where his mother had been long after she had left. And in her absence, the timeclock counted on. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Half-an-hour. A full hour. An hour and fifteen minutes. Twenty seconds. Half.

He rose from his seat, pushed his chair in, and began to do everything himself.

\--

The schedules in Luxurene’s manor were precise and easy to follow, and Valamand knew them well. In this way, no one was there to meet him as he left his bed at night. No one saw him climb down the banister to the undercroft arch behind the buttery. Then from there, it was nothing to unlatch the low window and clamber out into the garden below the terrace.

A fountain-spire of quartz and spun crystal made the circular hedges a great sundial. But set into it was an ancient door, parted by pure spring water. Valamand did not need a key. It made way of its own accord, for one of his bloodline. The stairs below were dark and dusty. It was good that he had perfected his magelight.

The narrow spiraling shaft opened into an arched vault sheltering a faceted apparatus inside. This spinel grew out of the stone, etched and cut with ancient precision. This, Valamand had been told, was a vital heart of the island. And as much a birthright of his as his hair or fingernails.

It lay silent and cold. Valamand walked past it, into the galleries he had once marched down for ceremony as a young boy. Soon, he came to the crypts of his ancestors. Each cremated, each handful of ashes pressed into a glittering gem.

He pulled out from under his shirt a thin book. It was one of his favorites, a series of essays on patterns of people’s behavior. Illusion magic seemed very useful, in the broad sense.

“I hope this is an acceptable offering,” he said. He did not know how loud or how soft he needed to say it, for his ancestors to hear him. Valamand left the book on the dais where last season’s offerings had been made. The flowers long-wilted, the fruit had long-withered. Valamand mourned the loss, but he had recopied the text. The Aedra deserved the original.

“I need your help,” said Valamand. Then he considered this was too direct. “If you wise ancestors decide to provide it.”

His mage-light filled the stark space.

“Among you are many great mages. Wizards that have shaped Alinor in ancient times. Luxurene itself is a home of Magic, more or as much as any ancient kinship. So there’s a precedent, that Luxurene is for mages.”

Valamand sneezed. It was musty down here.

“S-sorry. Anyway, I know I can be a mage. I know I will make you proud,” Valamand said. “But my mother, your Cyrodwen, doesn't agree. She tells me that there are needs of the times. That in the past, Luxurene needed the leadership of a mage. But in the present, Luxurene needs the leadership of the Thalmor. And a kinlord that might assist them, in their glory. She believes that I can't be both.”

Valamand thought that the water in his eyes _was_ must. He sniffed, and resolved for no tears.

“Please guide me. How can I become a great mage? How can I be all my mother wishes me to be? What is your will, for my future? How can I serve you?”

This was the point, Valamand had hoped, that the ancestors would speak from Aetherius and offer him some solution. At least some words of kindness, that they stood by his side. It wasn't uncommon!  He had read that ghosts of Tanzelwil stirred for priests and direct descendants, responded to the word of a royal that asked for them by name. And there were gardens of heritage in Alinor’s royal city where spirits advised the living, oracles among the Aldarchs.

But nobody came, when Valamand called.

“Please, if you will not speak to me, would you speak to my mother? That she would reconsider?”

That too, did not earn response.

Valamand decided to cut to the top of things. “Maybe then, Auri-El? I’m praying to you now in the depths of my family’s reverence to You… Would You hear me, in this place?”

And the young mer wondered briefly if he ought to pray atop a Tower, rather than in the dark of a crypt, for the heavens to hear him.

“I think I understand,” he said. Valamand sat cross-legged on those stones until morning came and he wandered out into the flowerbeds to be found. And they asked him where he had been during the night.

Like the ancestors, Valamand did not answer them. It was clear to him now, that if one knew something, it was beneath them to be anything but silent on it. It was the will of the wise that their scions must first act alone.

\--

Valamand now engineered his schedule, when he could. There were times when no one was around to account for him, and times he could easily make others believe he was one place when he was somewhere else. He devised simple spells, to emit the sounds of study and other unsupervised practices. Valamand found by now that many people just did not pay attention.

Instead of being where he ought to have been, Valamand walked down an island path to the Thalmor encampment. In the summer heat, the weeds baked brown and ivy wilted. Valamand had to accustom himself to seeing the untamed undergrowth, outside of a manor with servants to trim and sculpt the plants. Valamand wondered why the staff seemed sparer every year, when there was more work to be done in turn. These hedgerows were positively feral.

A goblin was following him. His mother had her ways. He threw rocks at it until it fled back up the path.

Unlike the staff at the manor, the Thalmor did not dog his presence. Their grey ironweave pavilions were off-limits, of course. But no one stopped him from sitting cross-legged in the fallow grass to watch the soldiers.

They moved with purpose, in black and midnight silk. Mathiisen steel with moonstone details. Instantly, Valamand could see the order of things. The runners passed under and out of the grandest canopy, passing word to the officers. The guard changed on the minute. And above all, all those in command were mages.

The greater mages led the lesser mages, and they all honed their power with drills on the practice yard. Valamand pulled out his secret folio, his coal-pencil, and began taking notes. He sketched their form, the position of hands and feet and how they aimed their spells. How they coaxed more power into their Destruction. Skin spells and alteration. Wards against enemy magics. Valamand even saw one summon an atronach and force it into obedience, though he had no way to study such a feat at a distance. Bargains with Oblivion were more private, he supposed.

“Young master! Hikpz finds you. Great lady bids you return!”

Valamand looked to his left. The goblin had a few bruises— if there were more rocks to throw, they wouldn’t dissuade the creature, either. “I will be home in time for supper,” Valamand assured.

“Young master, great Kin lady bids you return. Hikpz cannot return without young master.”

“You can, and will, and you’ll tell no one where I’ve been.”

“Hikpz is sorry. Beat Hikpz! Throw more stones! Hikbz must comply.”

Valamand turned to the goblin and looked into its stony eyes. The creature flinched as the young mer seized upon magic. And that young mer found only the most pathetic resistance to his Illusion and the power of his command.

“Great one! Hikpz is sorry! Will not disobey you again! Don’t hit! No!” it wailed.

“Go back to the manor,” Valamand said. “And tell my mother that I am learning very important things.”


	5. 4E 167

It was this equilibrium that Valamand navigated for several more years. He studied what his mother bid him to, until he with magic found a way to ease three hours out of a day to work on his own projects. Then his mother and her staff would find how he’d done so, and patch his hole. Then this would repeat. His mother had spoken to him twice. The first was a warning. The second was resignation, and the taking-away of things. Until very little was left in Valamand’s room at all.

But there was no book in the house that Valamand could not find again with two minute’s effort. The true victories were when Valamand managed to locate a book that he hadn’t known to look for. That was a weakness of clairvoyance-type spells. They needed precise direction, a target. Though his metaphorical arrow could find a mark on its own, it needed one in the first place.

The most valuable volumes were those that his mother wished to hide from him entirely. Valamand took this one out of the bag he’d stashed it within, and set it on the table of the upstairs serving-room.

_Maladies and Malformations, Nonconformations of the Mind._

Perhaps it was a treatise on phobias, or personality flaws to be exploited. There were quite a few Illusion manuals that studied these closely for sake of manipulating their bounds and inducing a desired behavior. But it couldn’t have been. There was a bookmark in this. And his mother  would never read a magic tome. Nor would anyone else in Luxurene’s great manor.

The section marked was “acute eccentricity.”

Valamand read this. Then he closed the book. And then opened it again, read it twice. He squinted, and read slowly now. And as he went, he felt rocks drop from his brain into his gut, one by one.

He clenched the book in one hand, thumb propping the page open, and moved from the drawing-room. He tried every room in the house with misty eyes until finally he encountered his old Tutor, who was actually named Oriantur in the ground floor library.

“Is this what you think of me, then?” Valamand sputtered. He had meant to say this cooly, but could not, without crying. “Simple? Of a deformed mind?”

He snarled like a beast. “Or kin to the obsession of wyrms, or a daedra’s depravity?”

“Young Master, this is unprecedented, I—”

“Unprecedented! No, every day of my life precedes this one— explains it. For how long did you intend to hide this from me? The meaning of _eccentricity?_ ”

Oriantur went pale. Guilt was proof of wrongdoing. Valamand knew this in his bones, knew it and was disgusted. 

“Young Valamand, you are understandably upset,” he said. And he could be so calm, _so calm_ about this. “But, as you’re prone to fits, I—”

Valamand made sure Oriantur saw the title in his hand. And he did one thing that he would never willingly do again in his life. He burned the book. It blackened, smoked in between his fingertips. Then burst into flame. And unscathed, Valamand clenched his fist through the ashes and felt them crinkle in his fingers. Pock scars into the carpet.

“My lord!”

There was no more anything to be said. Nothing. Valamand wiped the white powder on his hand on the doorframe and left the room, jaw locked

He would not speak to his Tutor again. Nor to any member of the staff without great need. Oriantur, now useless, was eventually dismissed. Valamand didn’t even notice when he finally was gone.


	6. 4E 169

Valamand was halfway through signing his name on the immaculate charter when his mother appeared to interrupt him.

“Valamand! What is the meaning of this?”

At least she had come in-person, Valamand thought. But that was likely out of respect for the Thalmor more than out of respect for her son. It wasn’t as if the island’s commissioning commander would heed the reproach of a goblin. 

Valamand signed his name in his crisp calligraphy.

“You should be proud, honored Kinlady,” said Lalendrion, the commissioning commander. “Your son will light the way to an era of Mer.”

“My son will do no such thing,” said his mother Cyrodwen sharply. She was so out-of-place in the light, outside the billowing pavilion. The fade to her fine clothes was clearer here, the worn edges at each seam.

Valamand did not speak first. He'd had a word with Lalendrion about it. About her, and what she would be forced to accept. Her difficulty, and what he would have to say to her. He assured Lalendrion that to an outsider, this argument would sound like nonsense.

Those eccentric of mind, after all, were not permitted to enlist. Best to fend off suspicion straight away.

“While he is of a protected bloodline and exempt from census-based service, Valamand is of-age yesterday to consensually enlist,” said Lalendrion.

“I will not permit it. Valamand cannot become Thalmor, his duty is here. Luxurene will not see him leave these shores.”

Valamand began. “Why do you object?”

Lalendrion, who had seen many try to impede the Thalmor, interrupted Cyrodwen’s reply. “Your son will bring your kinhouse honor.”

“Sir. Please let her answer. I want to hear her last excuses.”

Cyrodwen stood in the shadow of her son who for once stared her beast in the face. He did not recognize her expression. Perhaps she made it often, above his eyes. But Valamand doubted that now. It was no different from any other shade to pass before her face. To the young mer, a veil.

“Why is it that you object, mother, when the Thalmor are your confidantes and patrons? More replace your staff every day. But I cannot replace myself with them.”

On his tongue, ‘mother’ was as grand but as cold as a grave diamond.

“Valamand! Cease this foolishness. You don’t need to do this for us. Or me.”

“Why not for myself? I have everything to gain,” Valamand said idly. “I’ve made my choice. If you are too coward to prove Luxurene’s worth, I will do so.”

“You don’t understand,” said his mother Cyrodwen.

“I think you project,” Valamand said. “And lack of understanding is your greatest fear. Made manifest in me.”

“You are the most precious thing I still have,” Cyrodwen begged.

“And you’ll deny my wants for my worth,” Valamand argued, because he did not know when his words had defeated another. “If I am precious, it is as your flawed gem.”

“I am trying to protect you,” pleaded Cyrodwen.

“From what?”

And even Valamand saw the fear in his mother’s eyes as she scanned over to the anticipative Lalendrion. She took one step backward from her son. Another. And when she was finally gone Valamand felt a tether snap somewhere in him. He smiled, at the empty frame the pavilion made. Wilting bromeliads under the brilliant sun, vacant and picturesque.

\--

“I pledge myself to the Thalmor, to Alinor, and the legacy of true-blooded mer,” Valamand muttered in bed. Sore as a beaten rug, oblivious to the “shoosh” alongside him. The first night, he had argued with his bunkmates and it had come to no useful conclusion. What they wanted from him wasn’t silence, and at that point Valamand considered their protest nonsense. Expected from those born significantly lower than himself.

Pity the cook didn’t know how to cook for him, though.

““I am the pride, proof of perseverance of my ancestors. My purpose is their purpose. My being is their being.”

These were remarkably simple truths that Valamand suspected that the less fortunate had no proper education on. They affirmed only that he was in the exact right place, that the concept his mother Cyrodwen had been so fervent to impart was only echoed here among the Thalmor. Even at the most basic level.

Already he had distinguished himself at the basic evaluations as a potential battlemage. Most around him could not hope to ever be so adept— or think to have prepared in advance. 

“The true Aedra behind me, I reject false human gods. I take up arms against…” Valamand yawned. Someone next to him stuffed their thin pillow over pointed ears. “Against Lorkhan in all of His guises…”

Valamand closed his eyes, finally. “The tyranny of Man, the barbarism of Man… the…. the…”

His exhaustion finally caught up with him and he sailed down through his bed and out of his mind.

…

    …

        …

Valamand stumbled on, cringed as he knew this was a corpse he staggered over. The stars were dim overhead, snuffed out by the blackness between and washed away by a penetrating light. White and dead and naked as the sun, should it feel even farther away from Mundus itself. This place was barren, marred only by wounds and pits in its surface. A rust ash choked his breath, falling from the sky.

Valamand struggled to see through a lashing wind.

There was a human before him. He had never seen one before. But this figure to every one of his senses was too awful to behold: glazed in white plate, hair a black funerary pennant. Betraying flecks well-spattered its skin, and in its hands they held a sword red as the dust quickly devouring Valamand’s boots.

At the human’s own feet was a pile of elven dead, unimaginably huge. Pulled, into the killer’s remorseless eyes.

A terror seized Valamand that he would not remember upon waking, so encompassing that the vision wavered and remained pinned only by that being’s gaze. It did not move, or speak, but waited. And Valamand at some core understood that it stood at a border of thought and action. But he was not lucid in what it wanted, or that this was a dream at all.

He stepped forward, in a way that was less in intent and more out of fear of being buried by the ash. He evaded the thing’s gaze by looking at the ground, only to find more dead staring back at him. There was nothing to do as he fled upward and was eyelocked by the human. It advanced ponderously slow, unhindered by its slaughter. It did not smile or hear as Valamand begged for his life, nor did it frown. Instead, it raised the blade that seemed melted into its fingertips. Valamand could hear his heart beating in his throat.

\--

A more canny mer might have made the means to remember the dream, what night after night left his covers thrashed off. But Valamand’s emerging formal studies of illusion emboldened him. And every lights-out he passed with the first oath dropping from his lips, he failed to deduce the nature of this delusion.

A more canny mer might have understood that he was only eighteen and sheltered from the larger world. Oaths of ancient foes may have, if he had the heart to admit it, _terrified_ him. 

Two hundred voices strong, the oath carried over the Barracks of Errinorne and unto Skywatch by the wind. Valamand stood at the first rank of aspirants first-class, with two shining glass medals pinned to his chest. 

The rest of his class was not here. He would be rising from recruit to officer-candidate a full season early.

_I pledge myself to the Thalmor, to Alinor, and the legacy of true-blooded mer!_

_I am the pride, proof of perseverance of my ancestors!_

_My purpose is their purpose. My being is their being!_

_The true Aedra behind me, I reject false human gods!_

_I take up arms against Lorkhan in all His guises!_

_The tyranny of Man, the barbarism of Man, the Empires whelped by Man over-times: each bloodier than the last!_  
  
_Each in their grief to be undone, Man to be undone and in this way undo grief itself!_

_For grief is the most lasting establishment of Man, to be erased century by century._

_Under Crystal-Like-Law, I submit myself to the Aldmeri Dominion._

_I submit to the superiority of Mer as it suffuses my own being._

_I submit to the Thalmor and the guidance of their Order against Daedra, against Man, against all who would turn traitor to their will._  
  
_Within my heart, I carry all that is Aldmeri, all else to be shunned, and in time forgotten._

_I offer my self and my own to the Thalmor, the judgement of the Thalmor!_

_To be its essential hand!_

_To be its undeniable will!_

_To be the vessel of its inevitable victory!_

_To be the incarnation of its grace in sacrifice!_

_All this I swear, under Auri-El as my witness, to be upheld until I pass into His light!_

Valamand shouted the loudest, so fervent to prove that he among his line embodied these ideals. This moment rode with him long after the dining hall, his spare glass of wine and broiled fish. It rode with him all the way beyond the veil of sleep and into the realm of Vaermina where the human was waiting for him.

It faced him with its ghastly patience and this night Valamand could not be touched by the scouring wind. He did not tumble forward into the gaping hole of its eyes. 

“I’m prepared for you now,” Valamand said, and while he did not remember fitful nights there was a sub-current of recognition. Like the familiarity of broken-in shoes, his fear was shaped to him and he bore calluses from its chafe.

This night he stepped forth to face the human willingly, and it strode to meet him with the inevitability of an icy tide. Screaming to the heavens, he battled flames against the storm and engulfed the human in a pyroclasm.

It it knifed as through like still water. Valamand let the wind push him back. Step after step he lost ground to the human, step after step it forced a path to his throat. And after it had grown almost too much to bear, the human dropped to one knee, skin roasting and hair popping into cinders.

Valamand redoubled his power, called upon the words of that oath to fuel his magicka. His firetorch grew, he now advanced on the foe until there was nothing left but slag and charcoal. And he laughed viciously, scattered the pieces on that dead world until he awoke to the morning and a taste of stale wine in his mouth.

After that point, Valamand no longer experienced any dreams. Or if he did, they were indistinguishable from his waking world, and he could not remember or tell the difference.


	7. 4E 171

Valamand did not become an officer candidate.

That was the projected career path, perhaps. And if he had, there would be fewer staring eyes. But two or two hundred, it mattered so little to Valamand that he could have been standing alone atop a tower.

He was in the parlor of a manor in the north of Auridon, east of Firsthold and in sight of North Beacon. He was in this parlor with twelve other mer. Waiting for their application to be reviewed, and thus join the Thalmor itself.

This might seem odd considering Valamand had already joined the service of the Thalmor. But I will explain here what was intuitive to the mer from young childhood. We’ve no time to go back and explore that anymore. As the ruling body of the Aldmeri Dominion, the Thalmor is served by all Alinor's military and legislative authority. But to join the Thalmor itself would be as different as joining the Blades may have been, from simply serving in Cyrodiil’s common military. And different _from_ joining the Blades as well— a place among diplomats, nobles, magistrates and even royalty.

Valamand hugged the volume of his finest research to his chest and awaited his name be called.

“Valamand? Is there a Valamand of Luxurene here?”

The running-boy was almost thrown out before Valamand could get to him. This was very much not the way he’d wanted his name to be called. The running-boy saw the serious faces after him and shook, holding out a crisply folded envelope. He was not much younger than Valamand, and the other Thalmor hopefuls likely knew it. They sneered in scorn too, as their junior shoo’d their junior and slit his urgent mail.

Valamand read this letter quickly, folded it neatly back into its envelope, and put it in his inner robes pocket.

“And what is so pressing, to smuggle children in here?” said one mer to Valamand’s back, that he did not particularly care for but also did not expect to have to tolerate for much longer.

“A death in the family,” Valamand said.

“Oh,” the same mer mumbled.

“It’s irrelevant at this time,” Valamand said.

Then, his name was called from the manor’s foyer in earnest. Followed by four of the other mer to crowd in the parlor.

Valamand straightened his nicest robes, brushed his hair behind his ears, and strode into the old college’s hall. 

First called, Valamand was first to approach, offer proper courtesy to the old mer who sat behind the grand desk. “I am Valamand, sir.”

“Very good. The Thalmor have noticed your application. Goodness, I would have expected a mer of your breeding to already have been a member.”

Valamand did not know what to make of that, and so discarded it. He presented his newest folio. “Should I be admitted, I gladly donate a copy of my initial papers to the Thalmor’s libraries,” he said. “It is a pleasure to study for the sake of such grand purpose.”

“Ah! Quite so. What a trajectory you seem to be plotting, young Valamand. But it will take more than two years of Illusion studies to command battlemages on campaign.”

The four behind him, though they hid it, gasped.

“Or are you not aware of the news? As of today, the Aldmeri Dominion goes to war at last, against the wretchedness of Cyrodiil’s Empire.”

“It is fortuitous news,” said hardened Valamand, who felt all eyes on the back of his neck. “I have much to look forward to.”

Four behind him were reduced to three. But Valamand doubted that, if one of them feared war, that one could flee from it forever. The old mer at the desk looked into him, and Valamand struggled to set his gaze straight and ahead. Now was the time to shrug off weak impulse. The Thalmor transcended such things.

“A heartening attitude, from one so young. You bear the signs of your quality,” said the administrator. “Tell me, is there any factor that might hinder your prospective future within the Thalmor?”

“None,” Valamand said.

“Then I am pleased to inform you of your acceptance, Valamand of Luxurene.”


	8. 4E 173

Valamand lessened his Fear spell a few psychoarcane degrees, gentled only slightly his touch of Magicka into its creation. By altering the magnitude of the initial coercion, he expected a different response to the spell immediately following.

The subject, a prisoner and petty thief, screamed into his gag. It was not important what the subject saw, or felt exactly. Attempting to analyze the specific induced delusion was a fruitless toil and irrelevant to the result. Valamand’s next modified Calm spell washed over the subject, who now wept in relief.

Valamand scowled, carefully wrote down the results and exact measures of magicka. While the secondary illusion now worked (before, it had been unable to overcome Fear) it resulted in an unstable wreck. The aim was to change the perception of the caster and induce authentic trust, not merely to swap a target from devastation to salvation.

“Ugh. Can’t you do that work downstairs?”

Unfortunately, he was but one mer in a class of twenty-seven.

“To my knowledge, the space is full,” said Valamand, not looking up from his notes. “You will have to cope.”

Prisoners were a precious experimental resource, only to be employed in sight of a proctor or otherwise with permission, in approved areas. The main study hall counted, technically.

“Well, tighten up that gag. The noise is frightful,” said the other student, one of a few in the room at the time.

Valamand sniffed, and did no such thing. The prisoner finally had stopped whimpering and began struggling at his bonds again. “I wouldn’t,” Valamand said as an aside, hardly looking up from his notes. “You’re upsetting my colleagues.”

The prisoner only thrashed more. Valamand turned in annoyance to the fuss and held two slender fingers close to his subject’s eyes. They burst into flames, so close to leaking and now-silent tears.

“I wouldn’t,” he repeated.

The prisoner did not.

Valamand shook the fire out of his hand, trailing wisps of white smoke. “Very good.” And sat down to write again. Other students practiced their chosen focus in a loose circle around the tower-base room, and Valamand paid them no mind until a second interruption blistered his so-far productive morning.

“This marks the end of today’s proctored studies. All those with restricted materials, return them in a timely fashion,” the Thalmor supervisor said sharply. “And before the complaints even sully these halls— I know it is early. Unforseen circumstances have caused a shift in oversight schedule. Tomorrow all will be as normal.”

Valamand did not hide his scowl as a menial carted his subject away back to the cells, but he did not know if anyone was looking at him to catch it. One of the destruction-focused mages was forced to return an entire keg of fire salts. Another, whom Valamand knew to be in the same dormitories as himself, smuggled a small glass knife into his  sleeve before it could be confiscated. Conjuration work, undoubtedly. For blood offerings no blade made a cut as clean or fine as glass.

“So that’s it, then,” spat the womer who had been relieved of her fire salts. “Not so much as a warning, or an explanation.”

“You’re here to join the Thalmor, aren’t you?” scoffed another student, one with unfortunate facial hair. “Not the society of open secrets and unearned courtesies.”

The proctor walked out of the room. Valamand watched their feet linger in-step until he was sure they were gone, and until he was certain that with magicka he could no longer trace their presence by the doorway. There was always a certain threat of gossip in this place. Too many noble-born of different kinship under one roof. Even the superiors were keen to hear malcontent.

Valamand was for this purpose silent as often as he could be.

“I still think that if they wanted us to go with haste to the front lines, they would prioritize us.”

“It’s insignificant compared to the war,” said Valamand carefully.

Valamand could feel the eyes drifting to him like uncooperative swans over a lake. He clarified, “They know for certain you are their resource. One could not say the same of anything in Cyrodiil.”

His voice sounded too young in the air. He ought to have spoken more, to form alliances and political connections. But his boys’ voice next to the chatter of those a century older than him, or more!

“A sound point,” said the mer who had hid the knife, who could have fathered Valamand twice-over. “The Thalmor do know exactly who is in their control, and what remains as a threat to be neutralized.”

Valamand smiled weakly and looked down. He did not know any of these other student’s names. If he had remembered, he would have thanked this mer for helping his case.

The original womer, the fire-salts mage, seemed a good sort. Likely to soon fall out of the bottom, but goodly all the same. She smiled warmly. “You know, we don’t all have a chance to just talk. Like this, without anyone watching.”

“Is this independent study or leisure?”

“It’s a disruption,” Valamand grumbled.

“I’m Shileiah. Shelly’s all right,” said the womer.

Valamand groaned. He’d never be able to match who went with what.

“Kandenril.”

“Ilmion.”

“Dash this, I sleep in half your bunks.”

“Stow it, Athell,” said Shelly, the fire salts mage.

“Yes, I would venture that he screams everybody else’s name, rather than the other way around,” said the mage that had hidden the knife. Athell went as purple as wine as the older mer continued. “But I promise there are still maids that whisper ‘Solitar!’”

They all laughed then, but Valamand hardly thought it was funny. He laughed with them to be polite, though it was a shame that Shelly-with-fire-salts looked so lost.

“I am Valamand, of Luxurene,” said Valamand.

There was a chorus of “oh!” and “hoh!” around the room, one Valamand was accustomed to and hated in his marrow but could do little about. It usually happened when he had stated fact or come across incorrectly. He could cloud a crowd’s mind, but fathoming it was another story.

(It was easier to change it.)

“Old name, for sure,” said either Kandenril or Ilmion.

“I intend to do it good service,” said Valamand.

“With the top scores in all evaluation,” said Solitar. He seemed impressed. “At your age, no less. I had almost forgotten who owned that name on the score-board.”

“He is quiet, isn’t he?”

“I try my best to focus on my studies,” said Valamand carefully. “The Thalmor deserve it.”

“With marks like yours, I’m surprised they haven’t tracked you for Cyrodiil. They did it for Ales and Linde and a few others,” said Shelly-with-fire-salts. “I’m certain those are higher marks than the proctors earned once.”

“Don’t trust her, she’s in the bottom half of the class!” Athell sneered. “She could have got the maths wrong!”

“I’ll roast you, Athell.”

“She’s a fair hand at roasting,” Valamand confirmed. Still… there was a fast-track? Why was he still here? Several had made battlemage before he had with lower marks, though twice his age. “I can only guess that they do not have much need for an illusionist yet.”

“An illusionist! I’m still jealous of the Destruction trial last week. You have no right to call yourself an illusionist flinging comets like that.”

Valamand could not think to shrug, to accept or deny the statement. “You say that like such things are difficult.”

Another chorus of “oh!” and “hoh!” which confirmed that they were making fun of him, or that he had come across as too defensive or otherwise tiresome. It wasn’t exactly bragging if it was true. Why would something he had passed with ease be difficult?

Three chimes of a distant glass bell signaled that the lunch hour had begun. What of the students were “friends” began to file out, chatting amongst themselves. Valamand wondered if he could mimic them for once. He made to approach Shelly-with-fire-salts, but he was intercepted. By Solitar, who seemed pleasant enough.

“Would I be intruding, to have a few words with you, master Valamand?” asked the mer.

Something within Valamand desperately wanted to scream, “Yes, you would!” but that was not polite, and so he lied, “Not at all.”

“Suffice it to say, you are brilliant,” said Solitar.

“Thank you,” Valamand said, not knowing where this was going.

“There is absolutely no reason to hinder you with rabble like the rest,” said Solitar. “She may be foolish, but Shileiah is right. You would excel in Cyrodiil.”

Valamand looked out the window briefly. Things were much more verdant here, in the spring season. “I wonder what I would find there.”

“What indeed,” said Solitar. “Come, I’d sit lunch with you. Tell me what you’re working on. It’s got to be more interesting than this parade of clowns.”

“Well, it’s more delicate than complicated,” Valamand began. He would go on to speak for several hours, to forget Solitar’s knife in his sleeve and think only how smoothly the next months would go with at least one ally.


	9. 4E 175

Red Ring hit Alinor like a scourge.

Even where he was, deep in study, Valamand felt it too. The cry at each day’s news. The whispers of his peers, the letters handed-out after hours. The abandoned halls, for weeks afterward. So many had taken leave to mourn.

Valamand remained.

It was at that point that he was called in by one of his instructors. An unassuming sort, one he had not consulted in years. Proctor Ceralwen, Valamand knew her by. She taught protocol, one of Valamand’s least favorite topics.

Valamand sat down in the ornately carved chair in her private quarters.

“Biscuit?” she offered him piteously. It did not bode well to Valamand.

“Yes, please,” he said anyway, and took a single one from the small saucer provided, but he did not immediately eat it. “Thank you.”

“I don’t think you’re one to respond to the ordinary pleasantries,” said Ceralwen. “So I see no reason to be indirect to you. Are you aware that you have been blocked for ascension for the better part of four years?”

Hearing it from another was entirely different from quietly suspecting it himself. “I’ve thought so.”

“And you have not made to investigate this matter?”

“I have,” said Valamand. “I, and my colleagues, haven’t found enough evidence to raise a protest.”

“Then I would rethink your associates,” said Ceralwen. “Please. Enjoy your biscuit.”

Valamand took an obedient bite. Then he swallowed, and considered his words. “I don’t understand. Why look out for my interests? I cannot offer you land. Or the favor of my kinship, at least until my service to the Thalmor is complete.”

“Let’s leave it at this. There is another battlemage initiate, who has offended me. I know you have been wronged as well. It would be… inappropriate to address the matter myself. But with my authorization, why, a young mer could do nearly anything he pleases.”

“So I am your instrument?”

“You are here to become a battlemage. Many times, you will be ordered to eliminate any being your commander deems threatening. Consider that one of your company has turned traitor, and I assign you to the task.”

She ran one finger around the rim of the small saucer of biscuits.

“But I doubt you’ll need even that justification, once I—”

“It’s Solitar.”

Ceralwen sat back, startled. “Why, _yes_. But if you knew, then…?”

“I didn’t know,” said Valamand. “Based on your approach towards this topic, it was a simple guess. One that I had come to trust relatively recently, yet beyond my suspicion. One you seemed certain would upset me to hear named.”

He could feel his nails bite into his palms. The room clouded.

“An apt prediction,” he snarled.

“Well! I understand your high performance in illusion trials. Just shy of reading my mind.”

“What further action would you authorize, madam instructor?”

Ceralwen smiled gently. “Oh, I’ll leave it up to your discretion.”

\--

Solitar appreciated his collegue Valamand’s love of routine and schedules. It made planning around the boy simple. Their friendship was relegated to research and study meetings precisely eight hours past-noon every Loredas. Conveniently, this was the night before weekly trials scheduled the next morning. At any other time, the boy was content to withdraw into his own presence and not bother Solitar for any reason whatsoever.

Which suited the mer fine. There were other things to attend to, than Valamand’s tiresome attention. Not even his youngest son was so precocious.

This evening, Solitar descended the manor steps to the cellar-level and turned down the hall to the practice interrogation rooms. Something the boy had said about working on a live subject again, preparing for the latest trial. Valamand had been utterly convinced the marks from this one would qualify him for Cyrodiil at last.

Bless his sunlit brow.

It was entirely unlike Valamand to be late. When the mer declared eight-o-clock, he arrived at eight-o-clock. Not a minute before or after. Possibly not even a second before or after. Solitar sat down on the comfortable observation seat to wait. Perhaps the boy’d been held up by an instructor. Or gotten a letter from home. Who knew what interests a dried-up kinhouse like Luxurene could have lost at Red Ring? Solitar suspected the loss of even one relative would be critical.

The lights were lit. He, or someone else was supposed to be there. He waited still.

And he waited, worrying if he’d have to study for the trial after all.

And he made to get up, after his patience ran to its end.

But he could not. He was clasped at the wrists, by something he couldn’t see or notice. It took him a moment to process. Then panic, yanking at the chair, finding it bolted to the floor. Yelling for someone to help, knowing that at this time of evening there was no one on the cellar level at all.

Valamand did not enter the room. He appeared. He had been invisible.

“What is this trick? What have you done?”

Valamand regarded Solitar coldly.

“I don’t understand,” he said, “exactly why you’ve been holding me back.”

Solitar looked up at the mer and had never realized how tall that boy was. “Done what? I’ve done nothing, Valamand. How dare you—”

“Please,” Valamand interrupted. “I am more than capable of forcing your confession. But it would mean more, I think, if it came from your own honest will.”

“Valamand! I cannot believe that years of friendship would lead you to—”

“Do not insult me, Solitar,” said Valamand, “by asking me to drag the answers out of you.”

Solitar shook. “Very well. Valamand, I implore you… I am sorry. I have a relative on the advisory board. I did tell her to block your ascension to battlemage in the past.”

Valamand’s expression did not change. But eerily, he looked straight on and through him. Solitar had never seen the boy’s eyes in contact before. They were sharp and bright and as golden as the sun, unrelenting. Withering, today.

“What is her name?” he said evenly.

“Ceralwen! That is who you should be talking to!”

But the boy did not so much as budge. “I see,” was all he said. It could be that he was considering what to do.

“Stendarr’s pity, Valamand! Release me! I think you’ve had your scare!”

“Why, Solitar? Can’t you dispel this illusion?” said Valamand. “That was last week’s trial, if you’d recall.”

And the way the boy looked at him suddenly felt more like a drop down a deep abyss, than judgement or fury. “Of course I can!”

“You can’t,” said Valamand flatly. “I think I understand now. Observe. Here is your reality, Solitar.”

The room wavered, shuddered in his eyeballs, or his attention lurched sideways. The observation seat was suddenly facing him, replacing the iron-cuffed torture chair. Solitar looked down to see the manacles gripping his own wrists. He tried to break free, yelled for help, begged in panic, felt himself drop everything in his dignity.

“Don’t fuss. You chose to sit here yourself, didn’t you?” said Valamand.

“You’re mad! After I told you, you expect Ceralwen to—”

“It was Ceralwen that revealed you to me,” Valamand said. “So I would not bother her with this.”

Solitar’s mouth went very dry.

“You’re not here on merit, are you? You’d be plucked right out without me,” said Valamand. “You never needed to copy my answers or methods perfectly. Only just enough to pass with respectable marks. But there came a point where you could no longer do so from afar. Should I leave this academy, you would lose your groomed pet.”

“I saved your life!” Solitar snarled. “You unnatural and misbegotten _child!_ I have a son as young as you! Do you honestly believe that you would have survived Red Ring? Cyrodiil would make crows’ bait out of you in two weeks’ time!”

Valamand sneered, finally breaking the cast to his face. “Well, I suppose we’ll never know what it would have made out of _you_.”

There were a solid three seconds during which Solitar was aware he was being tortured, and about three hours during which Solitar could not remember his own name.


	10. 4E 176

“Questions persist despite the insistence of all the ages. But few so pervasive, and so self-defeating as, “can the mind ever be changed?””

Valamand had done nothing but practice this speech for ten days, and he could get through it without bungling.

“In realms both philosophical and magickal, flaws have bound prior study. Is a change of mind truly a change? Or merely a response to external stimuli? Is this an idea planted within us, or an authentic child born of sound reasoning? And in asking if our minds can be changed, we too must ask if our minds are our _own_.”

Valamand desperately forded eye contact with the panel, what nodded in whatever feigned-or-unfeigned interest. Why, perhaps they would be better subjects for this demonstration than the criminal in irons behind him.

He scoffed.

“An uncomfortable notion.”

And true as a statement, for how worrisome the panel seemed to be. No matter how impassive, they had obvious tells from the outside.

“But one the Dominion should be prepared to answer, for we alone stand to benefit from that knowledge. No— the mortal mind is _never_ wholly individual. But yet, that is an existential gem that bears this brilliant facet: the mind then _can_ be changed.”

He proclaimed proudly, “The Dominion might change any mind it pleases.”

Then Valamand released the prisoner’s cuffs.

Many things could have happened at that moment. The prisoner could have yelled screaming at the panel. The prisoner could have stood still in shock. The prisoner could have ran out through the open door behind the lecture hall: left ajar purposefully in plain sight. True mortal thought, however, was not so reasonable. The mer ran left, ran right, then finally after some seconds of panic found the door that it had been fixated on the whole time, swimming in panicked delusion.

There was no danger, of course. Valamand had already set up a fairly powerful barrier to stop the prisoner. And when they realized that no amount of forcing past the invisible ward would prevail, they settled to the floor, defeated.

Valamand cuffed them again.

“There is no need for alarm. This merely was a demonstration for your eyes— the natural state of this subject. They are under no magical influence, no alchemy or physical drug. They have not been starved, or beaten to excess. Now…”

Valamand seated the despondent prisoner in their chair. And, careful not to cast in direct line of sight, wove the workings of his grand thesis over the subject.

Their eyes glazed over, and they saw what they saw, and felt what they felt.

Valamand removed their cuffs, and their gag, and curled his lip to approximate a smile. “My old friend. Are you well?”

“As well as I can be, dear boy,” said the subject fondly. “What’s all this? Why have you brought me here?”

“This is a test, a demonstration of my abilities.” Valamand almost laughed. “And yet, you’re the center of attention.”

“Well can’t all of them lay off staring at me like so? I’m going to get hives.”

That was all Valamand was willing to tolerate. He placed the cuffs back on.

“What? Why these?”

He replaced the gag.

“Mm!”

He dropped the illusion.

The subject was screaming now, and thank goodness for merely a thong of leather and two strips of cloth.

“From your perspective, I have bewitched this mer. A Calm spell. Planted, perhaps, a false memory of me as his companion. Or caused him to mistake me for someone else. None are true; the method is more elegant, and far more fruitful to the Dominion.”

Valamand could see the panel begin to nod. They wanted the central thesis, doubtless. They would have to stand for some small amount of showboating. He designed up a flock of illusory birds, and released them to dissipate to the ceiling. “I have just now had to overcome your senses to present a few simple toys, at significant cost. Anything more complex only becomes more expensive, more tedious. Truly, why bother _forcing_ a vision on the subject? _That_ is the substance of my thesis. That the illusionist has a partner: the target itself.”

The prisoner wept in the chair. Valamand had to speak over the displeasing whines.

“The mortal mind is bound together by nothing more than assumption. So quietly, that many of us do not notice. Comfortable illusions we cast upon ourselves.”

He shrugged. “For example, that at any time, one is safe, and free from harm. That one is accepted among one’s peers. That in some way, we are relevant to the cruelty of Mundus.

“By changing these assumptions, you see only a taste of the short-term effect. No, I did not suggest in any way but verbally that I was this wretch’s old friend. They invented our history together themselves. A conventional Calm spell might have to fight every pricking reminder, have to struggle to ‘change’ the target’s mind. But the mind will do that work for us, and more. They did not have to change their mind about me; they have been made to believe they always had felt such a way about me. And, if that is possible… that they will forever feel that way as well.”

A murmur throughout the panel. They understood the implication.

“Yes, the long-term application,” Valamand said. “Gone, the conventional interrogation suite. The Inquisitor as an old friend. Minds that change themselves, or maybe _always_ had been changed. Had never had the potential to be anything different than the Dominion’s intent for them. Not merely military victory and subjugation of human arrogance, but total victory. Cognitive victory. A small omnipotence. If one cannot easily turn back the Wheel, why not turn all those upon it?”

The panel convened. They talked for an alarmingly long time, to the point of making Valamand wonder if he had said anything incorrectly. Then, one representative among them asked,

“Can your work override the base mortal instincts, as well? Make the wretch kill themselves.”

Valamand swallowed his own spit, and did not argue. He felt he ought to, vaguely. But to argue would mean immediate disqualification, undermining his own work, and would count as a clear, “no,” a failure or limit to his thesis. And he could not risk any one of those things, much less all in concert.

Valamand had never explored the answer to this question.

He cast his magic once more, and once more was met with wide pupils and entranced eyes. He undid the cuffs again. And, from the sleeve of his robe, he produced a chipped glass knife.

He placed it in the mer’s hands.

Now, this was not so simple as giving an order. Such a thing might be resisted. No, what resulted was a matter of degrees. Of making himself so grand, so terrifying, so impossible to bear, and making the prisoner’s will to flee next to nothing. To manipulate those base assumptions. Caught horror-struck, there was no way out and Valamand _had_ to in some sense understand what he’d given his subject.

The subject could not scream out of their gag. They turned the knife over and promptly slit their own throat to escape.

Valamand had closed his eyes and heard the wet _thud_ as they slid off the chair. And that was the end of it.

Valamand enjoyed a glowing review, publication into the official library at Skywatch, and the youngest ascension to Battlemage in the founding of the Academy.


	11. 4E 189

It was the third time this subject had offered him a drink that he didn’t have. If this kept up, Valamand would have to admit it was a drink he’d _want_. Still, between plaster walls and a barren interrogation table the setting was anything but personable.

To the subject though, it was as good as a tavern hall. Or wherever pirates slung their brew down their throats.

“You sure you can’t take a drop, my friend? There’s no other reason to come to Anvil these days.”

Valamand declined the cup of water, which his subject dearly believed was a fine wine. “I don’t drink on-duty. You know this.”

“Mm. All business. All staunch, and like.” The subject drank his water. “You know, in all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never asked your profession.”

“Surely you know,” Valamand said, soothingly. “You can’t have forgotten about Talos.”

“Talos! Bless his left and right arse-cheeks,” said the subject. “More of an excuse these days than anything else. I don’t know how you stand it.”

Valamand did not betray it, but _this_ was unusual. There was a catch-and-release basis with this particular fellow. Not once had he ever let on there was _anything_ in Anvil beyond some superstitious fishermen and Hammerfell exiles.

“What's so difficult to stand?” Valamand asked carefully. He’d want to listen well for his report.

“This! All of this. My friend, how long have you worked this post?”

“Fourteen years,” said Valamand, and remembered the days he’d first been assigned to Anvil.

“Fourteen! I’d have gone around the bend,” said the subject. “Toil and thankless, tiresome work it is, underneath a Thalmor magistrate’s eye. Still, cargo doesn’t move itself, does it?”

“Of course not,” said Valamand.

“Nothing moves itself. That’s the way of things,” said the subject, who was convinced he was drunk now. “If it did, the Thalmor would have fallen on your operation years ago. No, nudges in all the right places, and the docks aren’t going anywhere.”

“What do you know about the docks?” Valamand asked urgently. The subject blinked; that had been too straightforward. Valamand mouthed a curse. Don’t break the immersion. Even a feeble mind would catch on.

The subject just laughed and wiped his rounded nose. “I know enough, my friend. I know enough to say loading some Imperials into a boat doesn’t make a hero. What, does the God look down and nod wisely, and lift you to something more?”

He scoffed and put down his empty earthen cup.

“No, just bow your head and drink some wine already. The Thalmor’ll never notice you. There’s no heroic fight there, you’ll not impress anything on-high. I’m telling you… might as well lift lemon crates. Just as safe, just as thankless. Better paying.”

“Thank you. You’ve been very helpful,” Valamand said, and slid the cup away. Then he stood, looming over the Redguard subject. “But you’ll have to be more specific.”

Valamand wasn’t anyone’s old friend anymore. When finally there was silence in that room, Valamand opened the door, shut the door, and turned to the guard aside. “Remove him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Valamand paced down the slate hall, and up the stairs of the Aldmeri Estate. His black coat and robes swirled behind him. There were soldiers, groundskeepers, lieutenants, and other mages like himself. But if they looked at him he did not notice. He was busy composing.

They had been here. A Talosian operation. If it had been recent, Valamand would not have been so serious.

But they had been here for years, in secret! Revealed only for that his subject of the afternoon had a prop, and believed he was a terrible drunk.

A strange thought visited him. Wouldn’t things have been discovered by investigators? Valamand had never seen the outside work of Intelligence, only processed their prisoners. How could this have remained a secret?

Valamand did not linger on that long. It was improprietous to have a suspicious nature or distrust of wise superiors.

Valamand knocked twice on his superior’s door.

“Enter,” said the voice of Ewelion, First Emissary to the Gold Coast and Magistrate at Anvil.

Valamand placed his gloved hands on the brass handle, entered the richly carpeted room. It smelled of book-must, and of a tea taken a scant hour ago. Ewelion did not sit at his heavy cherry-wood desk, instead at the bay window. Valamand envied as the Magistrate turned an idle page. These days Valamand dwelled in lamplight and yearned for a golden afternoon.

“Well? What is it you have to say to me, boy?”

“Please, excuse my intrusion,” Valamand began. “But I have discovered a major lead on Talos worship in Anvil. It’s… I deemed it prudent not to wait, and to report directly.”

“Very well. Name, rank, first,” said Ewelion, who likely thought him tiresome. He turned his page. “If you’re no one for me to know by face.”

“Valamand, Battlemage second-class,” said Valamand with hidden irritation. “Prisoner processing and interrogation.”

“Inquisitory?”

“Specialist in Illusion,” corrected Valamand. 

“I see.” Ewelion turned from his book, but did not rise from his seat. “Report, then.”

“Concerning regular processing of subject eighty-five, a Redguard male Berun At-Ak—”

“I do not care for human names or titles,” said Ewelion. “If this news is pressing, _report_.”

“Apologies. To be concise, this subject under strong compulsion revealed to me the operations of a Talosian cabal, a smuggling operation by the third and fourth Anvil piers. What marks this as worthy of immediate action: it has been in activity for no fewer than ten years.”

“It is of no concern,” said the Magistrate.

Valamand blinked.

“Sir. I respect and defer to your judgement, but—”

“Justiciar, if there were a grand operation of heretics operating in Anvil it would be a specific threat to my tenure. Unless, of course, you were to suggest that for a decade I have been derelict in my duties. I would dismiss your findings as the ramblings of a bewitched, befuddled human. The lesser races have never had much between the ears.”

“I agree entirely,” said Valamand. “I only mean to report my findings, of course. To protect your interests in the Gold Coast, and nothing more.”

Much more, a sickness in his heart he felt boiling into his eyes. Feet planted firmly on the carpet, exactly correct posture. How he longed to rip the book from that mer. How he longed to live in the light.

“Thank-you for your report, Justiciar. You are dismissed. Be content that I will respond to this information _properly_ as due its urgency.”

There was a mathematics in turning on his heel, an angle to the door. A question of degrees. He was walking too quickly. His hair was lifting behind him.

He must not appear disturbed.

Tap-tap, his boots cleared over the fired tile floors. The sound in his mind was much louder as he decided what to do.

It was beneath the Magistrate to be anything but silent. It was not in his interests to allow Valamand to excel. Those who had, would never give.

Valamand moved to take.

\--

It was good to work outside, for once. If there was one upside of the uniform, it was that it wore very well. The boots were satisfying over a boardwalk. It was nice to feel the night air over the hood. Valamand could breathe.

Valamand was invisible. But he did not feel invisible. He felt the stars looking down on him and their judgement. He anticipated. The sea air, and the sound of wood on wood. The quiet cries of doubtless heretics: proof he was right. Proof that it was not powder salt and resin that was loaded by night. The creak of a ship belly-full in the harbor.

Valamand appeared.

It took a moment for some human close to him to let out a shout, or a scream. By then, Valamand had a satisfying fireball in each hand. He felt the magicka shaped and bound. Then let free. The ship’s hull splintered, a smoking wreck of charcoal.

He turned around and flung the other one at the far wharf. Sorcery consumed it, and Valamand heard the wailing cries of his success.

Men came at him with maces, fallen pins, whatever they could manage. Fools! They feared fire like beasts! A tongue of it turned them aside. The licks of light drew over their clothes, they panicked, screaming to put it out. Valamand did not allow even one to leap into the slip.

Another fireball at the sinking ship. It cracked in two. Another at the crews yelling to fetch water. Until he was wreathed in flame and all was quiet.

The crackle and pop of blistered beams remained. A column of black smoke that forced up into the sky, connecting the heavens and the earth. And when Valamand was certain that none remained, he claimed the amulets around each neck that had conspired to hide them.

He gripped them in one hand and walked up the hill through the gates of Anvil. The human guards did not stop him. But they watched him, and Valamand made sure they knew. The few citizens awake stopped and saw him, and they knew as well.

Valamand was glad that they knew a great mage when they saw one.

\--

“Do you know why you are here, Justiciar?”

The question came in a leading manner, not a sincere one. Valamand was unsure whether to answer.

“Yes,” was all he said. He sat across from the commander in black-hardened armor.

This was not the reply she was expecting. She raised one slender eyebrow. “Well? What have you to say for yourself?”

“Nothing that should not already have been inferred,” said Valamand. “With all respect, of course.”

“Of course,” said Commander Eleanie. “Justiciar, I did not make myself clear. I order you now to explain your reasoning in striking the dockyard. For your own sake, at least.”

Valamand paused.

“I believe I filled out an official report,” he said. “But as you say. I discovered in my duty a catastrophic oversight: over ten years of heretics smuggled out past Thalmor watch. I thought it prudent to report directly to the magistrate, who apparently did not believe the findings I presented. If it were to become known that for ten years of his seat there were ten years of failures... I could not allow this to happen.”

“I am sure your intentions were benign,” said Commander Elanie. “ And your thoughts entirely focused on protecting Thalmor legitimacy.”

“Entirely,” Valamand lied.

“And what evidence did you present to the magistrate, to legitimize your _own_ actions?”

“A dozen Talos amulets,” Valamand said firmly. “Fresh from guilty necks.”

“ _Before_ you chose to take unsanctioned, unauthorized action.”

Valamand stared at the lines in the dry wood table. The scars where a knife had bit into it, the stains where ink and gum had botched the grain.

“Is it not the duty of the Thalmor to take up arms against Lorkhan?” asked Valamand. Not weakly, no. Brittle, like a stem with the sap bleeding out and drying in the wind.

“It is _your_ duty to follow orders,” said his commander. “And all counsel and guidance that your betters _deign_ to waste upon you.”

Valamand swallowed his spit and felt it slide coldly down his throat.

“For example, what witness did you take from the scene of your… action?” said his commander. “You deliver me a dozen amulets, yes. But who is there to say there were not thirty necks there? Forty? Who is left to explain to me their origin or collateral? To turn mayhem into meaning?”

There was nothing to do but nod as his commander continued.

“And even then, if you were not ordered to halt the operation? It would not be yours to handle. There are a hundred-and-one reasons why the Thalmor might tolerate the enemy under our watchful eye. Conditionally, of course.”

Valamand nodded again but this was not enough.

“Justiciar! Look at me, for Aedra’s shame.”

He lifted his chin to his commander and did not see emotion there but a cold night, overgrown bushes that might hide anything within. Her pale, lancing eyes.

“Justiciar Valamand. I ask again: what do you have to say to explain your actions?”

She asked this, and Valamand realized that she was not _really_ asking him anything. There was no proper answer for her. She was attempting to impress that upon him that there was no accounting for his deeds. Despite that he’d made very clear there _was_. She could not undo him and she demanded he undo himself. As coy and shameful as a babe.

They very much wanted him to remain inferior.

“I believe the merit of my abilities may speak for itself,” said Valamand plainly.

\--

Valamand was assigned to Skyrim, and left for the north within one week’s time.


	12. 4E 189

Valamand was not impressed by the view from the ship

Valamand was rarely impressed. But even compared to Anvil, this was…

Well,

He stopped himself from counting how many walls Northwatch Keep had or if they all had tumbled down and these were a patch-job.

Still. The front lines of any true fight worth anything would be dreadful to look at. Order was a sign of victory. And he would not have been assigned to Skyrim had the fight already been won.

Valamand watched the fat snowflakes curtain around the ship, followed them down as they vanished silently into the black water. The Aldmeri Dominion was not at war.  
Not technically. Not yet.

There was hardly anything to gather before he put ashore. He had no valuables. Valamand disembarked, from sea-planks to pine-planks to regrettable bare dirt and gravel.

The air tasted angry here, frost-sharp and hungry. “This way,” he was ushered. Through rough-log walls, into the crumbling stone structure. The majority of it was underground. Valamand did not let anyone see him wrinkle his forehead..

This place was a jail. The pathetic prisoners looked at him with wan, papery facades. A well-kept prison, from the looks of it. He spared no further glance. A dour warden led him into the administrative office.

They shut him in with two guards and one gaunt womer who wore expensive powder and the most finely-tailored uniform he had ever seen. No more ostentatious or ornamented. But the quality, to Valamand who had an eye for such things, was obvious.

She did not bid him sit.

“Now that you are here, I will make one thing perfectly clear,” said the womer. “That my being here is a coincidence, that your arrival so happens to align with my inspection, and that you should consider yourself fortunate.”

“Yes, I—”

“I did not ask for you to speak, Justiciar.”

Valamand was thankful that she cared little for eye contact. There was a sort that preferred a downturned chin.

“Welcome to Skyrim. I am First Emissary Elenwen, your superior and ultimate commanding officer for your duration of tour. You will be assigned to a lesser agent, of course. They in turn are assigned to me. So I do not wish to deal with you any longer than is necessary. No questions, I presume.”

“How can I serve the Thalmor?” Valamand asked.

“Don’t be thick. I haven’t read your file,” said Elenwen. “How have you served in the past?”

“I was… in Anvil. Illusions, I,” Valamand said. Then he composed himself. “Madam Emissary, I am an accomplished battlemage, with over a decade specializing in interrogation and Illusion. But you will find my marks from the Academy sufficient qualification for any task you require.”

“We shall see,” said Elenwen. “Do not think to impress me with academics. This is the untamed wilderness, savage and bereft of sympathy for a proper education.”

Then she paused as if an awful scent had wafted past her upturned nose.

“You’re _that_ battlemage,” was all she said.

Valamand knew better than to think anything he could say now, rather than do _later_ , could change her opinion of him. At the moment, he told himself to stay quiet, and obedient. And soon when he excelled far past whatever she assigned him, she’d understand his true value and abilities.

“I believe I have an assignment that might suit your… pyrotechnic proclivities,” said Elenwen. “So tell me. How do you feel about an overabundance of fresh air?”

\--

That assignment, based on how long the southerly journey was, seemed the the farthest point possible from the Thalmor Embassy without being placed into eastern territory. It was not the _most remote_ post. One solitary agent cased somewhere called ‘The Rift.’ A rift between what and something else, Valamand couldn’t say.

But Valamand arrived in Falkreath.

Fog pooled in the lowland forests of Skyrim, a rolling sea between valley shores. Valamand saw the ‘kreath as through a lens to a seabed: dark trees and ferns in a murky gloom. Staring deer approached the roadside only to flit away like tawny fish.

The woods in these lands were not like Colovia’s sparse gnarls of cypress. These were old firs. Their branches bore a heavy burden.

It had taken two weeks, five days, and eight hours to finally arrive in the city in Falkreath. Where it could be called a ‘city.’ It was hardly more than a village. Valamand wondered if every Skyrim settlement was so primitive. They built wooden forts on mottes, dilapidated baileys with only log-piled walls for defense. It pained him to meet his assigned superior in a traveled state, but there was no washing-up to be done. Apparently Agent Sanyon did not have a dedicated headquarters and operated out of Falkreath’s inn and camps in the woods.

Valamand did not know who any of these people were, that gave him fearful looks as he passed through the town. But he noted them. Mill worker, shop-keeper… what Nords averted their eyes. Then he entered the Dead Man’s Drink.

“Large room to the right,” said the inn-keeper immediately, who had the good sense to be an Imperial. She glanced briefly at the shut door and then buried whatever feeble thoughts she had in her dishrag.

Valamand knocked twice.

“Password.”

“What? I wasn't told there was a password.”

Quiet on the other side of the door. There was a pair of boots under the short lip. Someone was waiting for him to leave. Valamand knocked twice again, more urgently this time.

“Agent Sanyon,” he said. “I request you open this door, so I may commence my duty to the Aldmeri Dominion under your command.”

“Password.”

The grumbling of the inn patrons prickled Valamand’s neck. But there was no breaking down the door, was there?

“With all respect, if this is Agent Sanyon, why is there a password required?”

“Ah! You could be anyone. Why would I open this door on your good word alone?”

“I have a letter from Her Eminence, First Emissary Elenwen.”

The Altmeri voice deliberated. “Slip it under.”

Valamand stooped down to floor-height, flattened the letter and crisply slid it beneath the door. He waited. Tapping his foot.

“Well?”

“Password.”

“Argh! I am an illusionist and I could make you believe whatever password I choose is correct!”

The voice debated this, audibly.

“It’s possible that you could be bluffing, and merely convince me that I’d changed my mind?”

“If I was not a Thalmor battlemage, I don’t see why I would reveal my abilities to the Thalmor on the other side of this door.”

Valamand wanted to pull his hood further down over his face by the time the door finally opened on soundless hinges. “Inside, then. No dawdling now, boy.”

And finally he was shut in the inn-room with a mer and a womer. The mer, obviously agent Sanyon, was looking him up and down. He was significantly shorter than Valamand himself. The womer was sitting by the one table and showed interest in nothing but the keg of ale by her elbow. When Sanyon was through, he turned back to the door, locked the lock, did up the two other latches, hooked a door-chain, and finally barred the door.

How… droll.

“Now, Valamand, was it?” Sanyon began. “I am pleased, if you are who you say you are, that you are joining me in my operation and that the First Emissary has finally begun to treat the threat in these parts with the gravity it deserves.”

“I assure you, I am most definitely who I say I am,” said Valamand. “And likewise, I’m… pleased to meet you, sir. And that my being here has great purpose.”

The womer in the corner had roused herself from her drink. Was making lazily defeated motions regarding her hand and her neck. What was she saying? Cut her throat? Cut? Kill? Stop? Cut it out?

“Great purpose, indeed! The Stormcloaks are everywhere these days. Why, just last Tirdas…”

Oh.

Valamand stood there and endured. The womer in the corner took another drink from the keg and then began to clean her terribly big axe. Trapped on-the-spot, it was all Valamand could do but to find someplace to stare that Sanyon wouldn’t think was solicitous of conversation.

“... And of course, how could I forget? You'll be working with Ilse, who does good labor as my strong hands in all overt operations.”

“Well met,” said the womer, in a tone that indicated that they were not well met at all, but in fact _poorly met_ or even _dreadfully met_ and that Valamand should not make attempts to meet her any further.

“Likewise,” Valamand mumbled.

“Very good. I can see that you will do well here,” said Sanyon.

Valamand agreed with him, despite everything. But it was not a question in his mind, or a challenge or possibility.


	13. 4E 192

The tepid fingers of rain down Valamand’s skin were not the worst part of a stakeout. It was the insects. Within two weeks Valamand had invented for himself five different illusions and three wards unique to repelling insects. At least deerflies were less complex than people.

Valamand wondered if there was a way to construct a Nord-repelling spell. But he soon realized that if he did so, he would never catch anything.


	14. 4E 194

There was a bookseller that came to Falkreath every six months. Valamand left an order with this man as soon as he arrived. Half a year later, his books would come. They were invaluable, unvaluable copies. He could have got them anywhere in a civilized land.

Someday he’d relish something rarer.

Even so, Valamand marked them up, filling his spare hours. He could miss three suppers in five days.


	15. 4E 195

His magic had hit a plateau. He wasn’t even fifty yet.


	16. 4E 197

Valamand grit his teeth and felt a split in his chapped lips. A chase!

Ilse was faster than him, even in armor. He wheezed.

But Valamand did not need to outrun his mark. They thought to lose him in the dark but a pathway in Valamand’s mind was open, leading straight to them.

He slid down a rocky forest embankment, saw the rattling cart. A target of wood. The prey of fire.

The trees splintered and bowed inward, zippering bark and shivering trunks. Every leaf and stem a sharp impression.

By the time Ilse reached the cart, little remained.

Valamand himself approached and saw Sanyon stagger up out of the bushes. He turned over remains with his clean boot.

“Stars above, boy! That’s the wrath of Magnus,” Sanyon said. Always quick to praise, but of so little substance.

“There’s nothing,” Ilse said.

“What?”

“Only one body,” the womer cursed. “A decoy! We’ve been had!”

Valamand still smiled. Tight and thin. He’d done his job. The failure was not his own. Somewhere, a cart smuggling the zealous and heretic traveled north.

At least now their outfit was down one driver.


	17. 4E 189

Ilse got letters. Even Sanyon occasionally got letters.

No such distractions for Valamand. This was the year he stopped noticing.


	18. 4E 199

The bookseller did not arrive in First Seed. Valamand did not know until Midyear. He’d forgotten again by Hearthfire. He could keep the time perfectly. But time did not seem to matter anymore.


	19. 4E 200

Valamand did exactly what he was told, these days.


	20. 4E 201

For all the rarity of actually engaging them, the behaviors of heretic groups were predictable. They closely resembled the actions of criminals and liars. Overcautious, over suspicious. To an ordinary agent, a dangerous combination.

But that sort of perspective was powerful enough to hide three mer in. The targets were already afraid. Misdirecting their minds unto a hundred other worries was simple.

The waiting though, was the trick of it.

“Keep holding,” Sanyon whispered, inaudible to the outside. “We must wait for their leader.”

Ilse pinched her nose and did her best not to sneeze. She was allergic to tree-pollen, this time of year.

Valamand himself had been awake for a day and a half already, sustaining an invisible existence only a stone's throw from this Talos shrine. Enough time to study it, and every detail about it. An oppressive icon, to be sure.

The eyes at least were downward-cast and could not watch him.

At last a straggling figure climbed the hill, rounded the bend and pushed past the bushes to their left. To Valamand, unremarkable: some human woman or another. She halted only a horselength away, looking at the rest of the Talosian service. Then she carefully approached the priest for a private word.

And then like all the rest sat down on one of the benches to pray.

“Boy, that’s the leader,” whispered Sanyon. “I’m sure of it.”

This seemed unlikely. “By what do you mark this, sir?”

“She would never otherwise belong. Yet look how she's accepted. How immediately the most suspicious of these fools welcomes her,” said Sanyon. “He knows her. He knows her true nature, what outwardly might fool a mer.”

Valamand nodded blankly. It was best to let Sanyon have these small fancies. He watched the priest turn back to his service, performed in silence and assumed secrecy. The worshipers one by one lowered their heads. Back to their obscene prayer.

When the last one had fallen into their thoughts, Sanyon gave the command.

The nearest target was an aged human woman wearing flammable clothing. Valamand was sure she was not terribly important. Ilse charged in, swinging her battleax and—

Valamand hadn’t expected her to actually get thrown off a cliff. By a Nord, no less. She’d climb the hill again and rejoin the battle before it was over. It was maybe her only spare pleasure, considering conversation eluded her even after so many years. The worshipers were fleeing. Valamand didn’t relish a chase, and quickly blanketed the field with confusion. They ran back in the opposite direction, unable to ‘find’ safety. Many froze like hesitant deer.

Then, bandits arrived.

Now nobody was moving. Valamand hadn’t considered there might be more than the Thalmor who’d set upon Talos worshippers. It was these folk’s own fault, for gathering in one place and then keeping their eyes closed.

Valamand counted the bandits. Eight more targets, that was all. Sanyon beside him gripped the heft of his steel mace. Valamand remembered, maybe though this was no time for it, that Sanyon preferred to use the Nord’s own weapons against them. Lest he leave evidence of an elven blade. Somewhat worthless sentiment, if Ilse used proper elvencraft instruments.

Ilse had not yet returned up the hill.

The priest ran. Valamand cast something to snare him, but missed. It hit one of the bandits— who charged forth, enraged. Sanyon leaped after the priest. The Talos worshippers screamed as they had before.

It was not a long fight. Barrage after barrage of fire left his fingers, he could hear the crunch of bone by Sanyon’s hand. But when Valamand turned around, Sanyon was gone. From twelve to five. From five to three. Some of the bandits may have fled. Valamand did all he could to stop them.

Then, Valamand felt a cold wind over his brow, something blown from the mountains that should not have troubled him. But time seemed to linger, the seconds and heartbeats throttled by blooded hands. One of the remaining worshippers, that girl, she…

Valamand saw her bow down and gut the belly of a bandit. Unlike, somehow, what she ought to have been. A pulse in his throat lurched up. Behind was the Talos statue gazing down upon her. Ash caught on the wind, in her dark hair. She gripped her red sword.

Valamand trembled at the void in her eyes.

There was only one more bandit remaining. This bandit doubtlessly saw her as he did, took a single glance at this creature and heelspurred into the woods. Valamand’s chasing fireball was much too strong. His nerves got the better of him. There went a cliff-face.

Now he was alone with this woman. He found his voice and commanded,

“Not a step, heretic.”

The woman staggered in dread. Valamand forgot exactly what he’d seen. Imagined. She was no danger to him. Valamand soon realized, though, that Ilse was slain at the bottom of the cliff. And Sanyon was not going to bid him question this woman.

Sanyon was lying dead some ways behind him, face-down in pine needles.

This was the only survivor. The last witness.

“There is no escape for you. Surrender or die,” said Valamand, because he now needed to take her. Defeated and shaking, she dropped her sword and garbled whatever words her mouth could hold.

Valamand bound her hands with rope cuffs he carried. He cremated Sanyon and Ilse himself. Then he led the human away.

East. And then north.

Valamand, who did not know what to do, was going to find answers at Northwatch Keep.

 

-END-


End file.
